Many of you may understand what I'm talking about. You start out with a goal, saying "I'm going to read the whole Bible in a year!" Heck, Muslims read the entire Quran and memorize every word of it, why can't I do the same, right? So you start with Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve. You get to Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses... things are looking good. Then you stumble upon Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers, yikes! You suddenly realize you "lost" the story. Everything was going great until now and you decide "well this doesn't apply to me anymore so I'll just skip ahead". You see, that's the difficulty in reading scripture without a guide... its like wandering in the wilderness without a map and that's sadly where many of us fall. Later on we give up and when we want to be inspired, we flip open the Bible and hope we stumble upon a feel-good message from Jesus. But still, what happened to the big picture?
Again, this issue applies to ALL people and when in dialogue with our Muslim brothers and sisters its very important to remember. We all know bits and pieces of the story, we all pick and choose scripture passages to throw at one another but that's not very helpful is it?
Ok so what's the point right? Fine... try explaining the trinity to a Muslim without a solid foundation and prepare to be destroyed. Try explaining God's plan of salvation without knowing the story of the fall and original sin, the sacraficial lamb, and how that relates to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. There are hundreds upon hundreds of connections to Christ from within the Torah that we as Christians need to be aware of and if we could understand the frame of the story we'd be in a much better possition to dialogue with our Muslim brothers and sisters.
If you're wondering how you should start to read the Bible, here's a few tips:
- Try reading these 12 Periods in 14 narrative books (threads) of the Bible:
- Early World (Genesis 1-11)
- Patriarchs (Genesis 12-50)
- Egypt & Exodus (Exodus)
- Desert Wanderings (Numbers)
- Conquest and Judges (Joshua, Judges; supplemental -- Ruth)
- Royal Kingdom (1st & 2nd Samuel, 1 Kings 1-11)
- Divided Kingdom (1 Kings 12-22, 2 Kings; supplemental -- Jonah)
- Exile (2 Kings 17, 23-25; supplemental -- Jonah)
- Return (Ezra, Nehemiah; supplemental -- Esther)
- Maccabean Revolt (1st & 2nd Maccabees)
- Messianic Fulfillment (Luke)
- The Church (Acts of the Apostles)
- READ IN CONTEXT
- You have to put on your historical glasses while reading the bible. You cannot apply today's science and knowledge to ancient texts. A lot of scripture is poetic, is political of its time, is based on the surrounding empires etc. Its ever important to read scripture in context! This is also one of the difficulties in dialog when people take passages out of context and many counter claims can be refuted if one simply understands this.
- Try reading scripture in the light of Christ and see how the Old Testament passages relates to the New Testament.
Now the twist to all of this is (and I'll get into more details later) is the order of the Surah's in the Quran and when Prophet Muhammad had his revelations. Where's the narrative thread in the Quran? The Bible and Quran have a "message" but they are transmitted very differently and its important to study and understand that. But I hope you understand my message in this post; that it's so important to grasp the base foundation of the Bible story with the narrative thread in order to understand the "why", "how", "what", and "who" of Jesus Christ the Messiah. This is our story with God by the way, its important to understand what our Father said and did! ~ God bless
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